


Hold Onto Your Star

by withasideofangst



Series: RotG One-Shots [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Pre-Slash, Rise of the Guardians AU, Sorry Not Sorry, Space Warriors AU, author is an asshole, it was originally space pirates and then I whoopsed into this, the man in the moon is an asshole, whoops i broke physics for my own convenience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:50:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3776116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withasideofangst/pseuds/withasideofangst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by the song “Hold On” by Colbie Caillat.<br/>This story runs along with the movie, but Jack never regained his memories from his teeth, and the NK isn’t nearly as horrible as the actual back story from the books.  I did draw on the back story a bit but not in a spoilery way.</p>
<p>Kozmotis Pitchiner was the greatest of the Golden Warriors, commanding a ship patrolling the known universe, until his ship crashed on a small blue planet called Earth.  Stranded on Earth, he ends up becoming the Nightmare King.</p>
<p>What Kozmotis, now called Pitch Black, doesn't know, is that he was not the only survivor of the crash.</p>
<p>Jack Frost died in the crash and was resurrected by the Man in the Moon, missing all his memories and alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Crash

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song “Hold On” by Colbie Caillat. I recommend listening to it while reading.
> 
> This story runs along with the movie, but Jack never regained his memories from his teeth, and the NK isn’t nearly as horrible as the actual back story. I did draw on the back story a bit but not in a spoilery way.
> 
> (Video for the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvRptYwP39s )
> 
> Beta-d by several of my friends, but any remaining errors are entirely my own.

When the ship carrying the Golden Age’s greatest warrior crashed on the tiny blue and green planet at the edge of the explored universe, the local fauna froze to watch the graceful ship’s unsightly crash into the side of a mountain.

Some of the bravest animals approached the smoking mass, but scattered when a section of wall blew outward, and the very dishevelled, so-called “Pride of the Golden Warriors” stepped out, injured and bleeding from several cuts on his body.

He was the only survivor.

In the midst of a war, he knew instantly that his commanders would never know what happened to his ship.  Even if they received their hurried mayday signal as they crashed, they would likely be determined to have been shot down, and the solar system avoided as enemy territory.

The warrior wiped blood from his mouth and kept one hand on the hilt of his sword.  They didn’t even know the cause of the crash; for all he knew, this was enemy territory.

But the calm around him belayed such thoughts.  Having crashed somewhere in the midst of a white, barren landscape, with small white particles falling from the sky, there was no signs of any higher life-forms around, and the landscape looked untouched, aside from the damage caused by the crashing ship, caving a huge gouge out of a mountain and creating a large rut in the tundra beyond it.

Scavenging what he could from the ship, the warrior turned and left, traveling towards the setting sun, tracking his position with the constellations slowly appearing with the disappearing light.

He never saw how the moonlight condensed over a frozen lake, the ice partly shattered in places and covered in debris from the ship, or how the body of a boy on the edge of manhood emerged, the scraps of the uniform for the ship’s support staff still hanging, burnt and bloodied, from his body.

He never saw the boy blink deliriously in the moon’s bright light.

“Wh-....” the boy mumbled, looking around and seeing nothing but the crashed ship. “Where am I?”

He stumbled away from the lake holding a branch broken from a nearby tree as a walking stick, only to collapse against a tree only a few yards away.  He pressed a hand against his side, where his clothes were ripped, seeing it come away sticky with blood, but the skin beneath was unblemished.

“Who...am I?” He mumbled.


	2. Shipwrecked

Jack Frost flew over a forest in Russia, coating everything in a thick mantle of snow.  Below him, a buck hissed at him as a thin film of ice coated its antlers.  Jack laughed as he flew away, watching the deer headbutt a tree to try to rid itself of the annoyance on its head.

As he passed over a particularly desolate region of the north, however, even though he was thousands of feet in the air, Jack shivered, and he felt a dark presence nearby.  He banked and flew towards the feeling, unable to shake the familiar sense of dread.

He hadn’t felt this since he’d thrown in his lot with the Guardians, and had taken down the Nightmare King.

The feeling of dread had nearly peaked when Jack felt something on his leg, and as he twisted to look down, he was abruptly pulled out of the sky.

He hit the ground with a crack like a whip, and lay facedown in the snow, dazed, his head pounding.  He felt like he’d just been hit by a mountain.

Actually, he’d run into a mountain before.  This hurt more.

Before he could even bring himself to twitch an arm, he felt bands of heat restrict both his arms and legs.  Another band wrapped around his neck, tightening slightly as he jerked in surprise.

  
“Jack Frost,” a voice murmured, sounding far too cold in contrast to the band of fire wrapped around Jack.

At the sound, Jack felt like his blood had turned to ice in his veins.  He didn’t realize he could still feel cold.

“P-Pitch Black,” he gasped around the band still tightened around his throat.

The bands tightened as he fought to raise himself onto his elbows, so he could see his enemy.

He stood in the mouth of a unnaturally-formed cave, shadows leaking out from him, ready to attack.  He looked every bit as strong as he had when the Guardians had defeated him.

Jack knew he couldn’t do it alone.

“What - “ Jack started asking, but the band of shadows around his neck tightened again and cut him off as he fought for air.

Pitch glared at him from the shadows, and smiled thinly.  Jack was surprised to realize there was more bitterness in the smile than maliciousness.

“You’ve no right to ask me questions, Jack.  You are the reason I lost last time.  Tell me,” Pitch added, starting to pace in front of the cave, “why should I not snuff out your frost right now?  The Guardians could not stop me a second time without you.”

Jack felt his fear spike as Pitch slowly stalked towards him, catlike, one hand extended towards his face menacingly, shadows leaking from his fingers.

“Wait!  Wait, I…STOP!” Jack screamed, and ice spilled from his skin, flash-freezing the shadows holding him and covering his skin and hair in icy shards, before spilling out towards Pitch.

Pitch’s face showed fear for a second, as the ice rushed at him, and he quickly made to teleport away, but the ice froze his feet to the ground and he stumbled backwards and falling into the snow, shattering the air of evil malice he’d been projecting.

Jack almost felt a little bad for him, looking disgruntled in the snow.

Almost.

“You’re not the only one who grew stronger,” he declared, but his false confidence was betrayed by the tremor in his voice.

He hadn’t know he could do that.

Pitch glared at him from his seat in the snow.

“Fine, alert the Guardians.  They’ll imprison me again, just as you wished, and I’ll never be rid of you all.”

Jack blinked.  The being before him seemed more like a sulking teenager and less like an evil supervillain.

“Trying to make me feel sorry for you?” Jack guessed, pointing his staff at Pitch carefully and taking a step towards him.

Pitch glanced up, actually looking surprised for a moment before masking his expression.

“You feel sorry for me?”

Jack frantically stepped back, feeling tricked.

“I...No!  No, I don’t, you hurt all those kids...You’re a monster!” He shouted back.

Pitch’s face grew smug again, but there was a sad tick at the corner of his mouth, and the smugness didn’t reach his eyes.  They looked dead.

“Of course I did,” he sighed.  “Isn’t there something you want so badly, you would do anything to get it?”

Jack blinked.

“Something I want that badly?  I...no, there isn’t...”  Jack’s voice drifted off, confused.

Pitch’s eyes never broke contact with his, and under his stare, Jack felt like he was being read like an open book.

“Liar,” Pitch nearly whispered.  “Your lost past, your new _friends_ , who you’ve found in the Guardians.  The children.  You’d do anything to protect them, wouldn’t you?”

Jack froze.  It was true.

Seeing his face, Pitch nodded as if Jack had spoken aloud.

“To you, they are your most precious things.  Does it surprise you to find out I have such things too?  If it does, you’re more naive than I thought.”

Jack blinked, and realized the hand holding his staff at Pitch had drifted down as he’d listened, and he quickly raised it again.

At the motion, Pitch seemed amused.

“You _are_ naive.”

Jack gritted his teeth, convinced he was falling into some sort of trap.

“You claim you have something like that too?  What?  What could possibly be so important to you, that you’d become a monster?”  Jack half-shouted angrily, then felt a pang of guilt when Pitch’s face dropped.

“My family.  My daughter.”

Jack froze, staring.

“Your...your what?”  He laughed nervously.  “You’re kidding me.  If _you_ have a daughter, she’s gotta be one messed up - “

Jack broke off as Pitch lurched towards him, grabbing for his throat, fury on his face.  Long fingers closed around his neck just as his frost spilled out of his staff, freezing Pitch’s hand and arm, and spilling across his robe, locking the fingers open around his neck.

Jack panicked at the expression on Pitch’s face, less than a foot from his own, as Pitch kept him pinned against the rock behind him.

“Do _not_ ,” Pitch whispered menacingly, “mock my daughter.  She may well be already dead, left alone in the stars for so many hundreds of years without me.  We were at war, and she would have been a prime target for the enemy.”  Grief crossed his face before being replaced by fury again.

“She...what?  War?  The...the stars?  You make it sound like you’re not from this planet,” Jack laughed nervously to mask the fear still radiating from him, even though he knew Pitch was drinking it in.

Pitch smiled coldly.

“The Guardians never told you?  I’m not.  I was General Kozmotis Pitchiner of the Golden Warriors, protectors of the universe.”  His voice was spiteful, mocking himself.  “But even a general stranded on a tiny planet on the edge of the universe is no use to a daughter, all alone in the middle of a war.”

Jack stopped freezing Pitch’s arm in shock, and waited for Pitch to back away  as his body heat quickly melted the remaining ice, but he didn’t move.  He looked through Jack, and Jack knew he wasn’t seeing Jack anymore, he’d forgotten about the hand around his throat.  He was somewhere in the stars, worrying about this daughter of his.

“Then,” Jack mumbled, trying to get Pitch’s attention back, “why are you still here?  Why didn’t you leave?”

Pitch’s eyes refocused on Jack’s, and Jack could see him remembering himself, and he quickly backed away a few steps.

“I cannot.  My ship was destroyed, all my crew killed, when I crashed here three hundred years ago.  I hid the ship, and I sought to harness the darkness on this planet in order to return to my home, but the nightmares were not enough.  Then I sought to use the nightmares of the children...Their terror was even stronger, and that failed again.  There is no power left on this planet that is strong enough for me to return to my daughter.”

Pitch covered his face in one hand, leaning back against a tree, despair coating his voice.  The shadows still clinging to him grew agitated at his grief, swirling around his feet faster.

Jack hesitated, something clicking into place.

Three hundred years ago, General Kozmotis Pitchiner’s ship crashed, stranding him on Earth.

Three hundred years ago, Jack Frost woke up near a smouldering ruin, wearing clothing not like anything he’d seen since, covered in blood but uninjured, memoryless and alone, and once he’d left the crash site, he’d never been able to find it again.

He’d been on that ship.

He was certain of it, even as he was certain he had never been a soldier like Kozmotis - like Pitch Black.  From what North had explained about the Man in the Moon, Jack guessed he’d been killed in the crash, but for whatever reason, the moon had revived him.

Him, Jack Frost.  Someone from the stars, someone who had possibly known this ex-general standing before him.  Someone more than a lost boy no one had loved enough to miss, and a reason why he had never found a family missing him, in all the time he’d searched, until no one who could have known a human Jack Frost was left alive.

Jack made up his mind.

“I’ll help you,” he said firmly.

Pitch’s hand on his face lowered slightly, his eyes narrowed and face confused.

“I’m sorry?” He asked suspiciously.

Jack coughed awkwardly.

“I said, I’ll help you.  The Man in the Moon gave me the power to control the entire planet’s winter.  Isn’t that enough to help one man - one ex-General of the stars - get off this planet?”

Pitch blinked slowly, staring at him, the hand falling from his face, a hungry look slowly growing on his face.

“It just might be.”


	3. North

After Jack and Pitch had accepted their new partnership, Pitch took Jack back to the ship they’d arrived in, Jack still avoiding any mention of his past, or the torn uniform he still had, sealed in ice in a cave somewhere fairly nearby.

Seeing the ship again, as they dug through the snow to see what Pitch had been able to repair over the centuries, Jack would occasionally get flashes of memories, of working on the ship, of his friends among the crew, of working under the greatest general in the golden armies.

Those last memories hurt the most, as he sometimes caught flashes of seeing Kozmotis Pitchiner on the ship, commanding his crew, unaware of the adoring stares he was receiving from his support staff, including one young brown-haired man.

The memories made him redouble his efforts, and with his ice and the shadows’ help, they unburied one of the long-range escape pods Pitch had been working on, mostly intact but drained of all power.

Its engine was dead, but Jack thought he could get North to fix it.  Pitch thought his frost magic might be compatible with it, so if they could fix it, he could charge the battery.  Neither Pitch nor Jack understood exactly how it worked, but Pitch, with his memories as Kozmotis, understood enough to know that it had been able to change the Golden Warriors’ light power into energy, and so might be able to change Jack’s.

He just had to get North to agree.

And so, when Jack arrived at the Workshop with the battery in a sack over his shoulder, he was far more nervous than usual.

A yeti directed him to where North was working on a new toy soldier design for the children, and he hovered impatiently in the doorway while North finished giving orders to the yeti, absent-mindedly frosting over the doorframe.

When North suddenly clapped him on the shoulder, Jack was so surprised he nearly dropped the sack as the weight of North’s hand swatted him to the ground like a fly, landing somewhat less than gracefully on his feet.

“Hey, North…” he said cheerfully, trying to mask his nervousness with a cockiness in his step.

“Jack!  It is good to see you!  But no freezing the yeti again, yes?  We are busy now!”  North’s joyful voice roared.

Jack grinned, still trying to hide his nervousness.  “Yeah, yeah, I promise...um, North, I have something I could use your help with?”

North looked surprised for a moment, then he laughed and clapped Jack on both arms, grabbing him and lifting him into the air.  He looked thrilled that Jack had asked for his help.

“Of course, Jack!  It is not often you ask for something!  What do you need?  New sweatshirt?  Ice skates for a lucky kid?”

“No, I - “

“Ah, then a sled then!”  North bellowed for a yeti, and Jack’s nervousness grew, but so did an undercurrent of anger.  The Guardians listened, but they never really _heard_ him.

“No, I - “ seeing North still wasn’t listening, Jack flew up in front of his face.

“North!”

He stopped, and blinked at Jack in surprise.

“Ah, sorry, Jack.  Not a sled?”

Jack sighed and floated back a few feet but didn’t land.  He had a feeling he might need to flee when North knew why he was asking for his help.

“No, not a sled.  I...found this...battery, but it’s broken.  Can you help me fix it?”

North frowned and tilted his head.  “Battery?  What kind?  You don’t need to fix a -”

Jack shook his head, cutting North off.

“No, it’s...a special kind of battery.  For an engine.”  He drew the large thing out of the sack.  It was nearly as long as his chest, shaped like a cylinder, and distinctly alien-looking, with markings on it that Pitch had explained were symbols from the lunar language.  Jack couldn’t tell him that he could read just a few of them without being told.

North’s eyes squinted at the “battery,” and Jack could tell the moment he realized its origin, as North stepped back and looked at Jack in horror.

“Jack, what have you been up to?  What has Pitch convinced you to do?”  He asked, his voice raising to a roar by the end.  A few yeti stopped their work and looked at them in alarm.

Jack flew backwards as North reached for his arm, shaking his head rapidly, and making sure to keep the battery out of North’s reach.  He was afraid North might break it.  And again, the thread of anger coiled around his stomach.  They didn’t trust him to make good decisions on his own.

“Nothing!  North, he’s not as bad as we thought!  I mean…” Jack added, seeing North’s face growing more angry and worried.  “Okay, he is bad!  But did you know he has a daughter?  He’s just trying to get home to her!”

He paused as North suddenly frowned, clearly surprised.

“What are you talking about, Jack?  He is just lying - “

Jack frantically shook his head again.

“North, stop!  I believe him, he’s not lying.  I’ve seen the ship he crashed in - Did you know he used to be a general?  General Koz-….er….Kozmotis!  He commanded Golden Warriors, and he was good, until he crashed here.  He was trying to use the nightmares in order to get strong enough to return to his home!”

North frowned at Jack again, still looking worried.  The yeti around them had emptied the room, fleeing their argument, shoving the elves out in front of them.

“Jack, he’s lying.  He is just a monster.  If he wants to leave, he must want to attack other planets, not help them like he says.”

Jack frowned, realizing North wasn’t going to believe him, unless…

“North, I know he’s not lying.  I was on that ship, when it crashed.”  Jack stared at North, not even blinking, his face stubbornly determined, staring back into North’s face, frozen in shock.

Then North’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

“Jack, you...remembered your past?”

Jack nodded, hiding his annoyance that he’d had to tell North before Pitch.  If he ever decided to tell Pitch.

“Yeah, I was on the ship.  I don’t remember everything, but I know that.  I think I died when the ship crashed, and the Man in the Moon saved me.  I still don’t know why.  But please, you don’t have to trust Pitch, just trust _me_.  Help me fix this?”  He held out the battery again.

North stood still, staring back at Jack for several minutes without looking away, until Jack’s arms felt like they’d fall off from still holding out the battery.

Finally…

“Okay, Jack,” North said, resigned.  “I will help you.”

Jack’s face split into a grin.  “Thanks, North!”  He handed over the battery with only a touch of nervousness.  If anyone could fix it, North could.

As he turned to fly out a window, North reached out and caught his shoulder.

“Jack, if I fix this…” he trailed off.

“Yeah?”  Jack asked, confused by the look North was giving him.

“Are you leaving with Pitch?”

Jack blinked back, shocked.

“I...I hadn’t thought of it,” he said, startled.

North nodded slowly.

“Whatever you decide...If you leave, come say goodbye.”

Jack nodded, his throat tight, and flew out the window.

 


	4. Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Yes, I realize how I break physics in this chapter. Shooooosh. Suspension of reality. Love it. RotG introduces magic without my help. I can break a few laws of physics.

Jack didn’t immediately return to Pitch’s cave, and found himself lying on a branch high up in a tree, leaning back against the trunk.

North had raised a question he hadn’t even let himself think of.

Did he want to leave this planet with Pitch, presuming North could even fix the engine?

He wasn’t sure.

He’d had a...bad three hundred years alone, and learning that he wasn’t really a human just made him feel more alone.  But he’d also found out there were more people like him.  More people, even if they weren’t human.  Maybe even a...family, somewhere.

But he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave and rejoin an intergalactic war, either.  If the war hadn’t already been lost or won.  Not even Pitch knew that.

At the same time, he worried how Pitch would react if he returned to find his daughter dead, killed while he was shipwrecked at the edge of the universe.

Yeah, he worried about that a lot.  And he could tell Pitch did, too.

Particularly as his memories were gradually shifting back, as if he’d opened a crack in a dam, his old adoration for General Kozmotis mixing oddly with his lingering distrust and growing sympathy for Pitch Black, and Jack wasn’t sure how to deal with him when he saw him again.

He wasn’t sure what to -

“There you are,” a voice said from the base of the tree.

Jack jerked up into a crouch, shocked out of his thoughts, dislodging the snow which had fallen over him as he sat lost in thought.

The snow hit the ground with a light _thump_ , and Jack looked down -

To see a very sour-looking Pitch standing there, covered in snow.

Jack blinked in shock, and then laughed so hard he tipped backwards on the branch and ended up hanging upside-down from the branch by his legs.

A moment later, a hard ball of shadows smacked him in the face, and he lost his balance on the branch and fell spread-eagle on the snow below.

After a moment of shock, while he just lay face down in the snow, still laughing a little breathlessly with some of the wind knocked out of him, and then he stared up at Pitch with a small thread of growing apprehension.  Pitch was brushing off the snow while looking like a _very_ disgruntled cat, and Jack started shaking in laughter again, the constant undercurrent of fear that always grew around Pitch shattered for the moment.

Pitch glared at him, but Jack couldn’t stop laughing.

“Judging by the lack of engine on you, I’m guessing either North destroyed it, which seems unlikely if you’re so light-hearted while avoiding me,” Pitch peered at him and Jack felt a pang of guilt at being found out, “or he agreed to fix it.”

Jack choked down the rest of his laughter, wiping the corners of his eyes.

“He agreed,” Jack said, nodding.

Pitch looked relieved for a moment, before hiding his expression again.

“Then we just need to wait,” he said with a false air of patience, leaning against the tree trunk.

Jack thought he looked ready to spring into action, but there was nothing he could do to speed up North.

Instead, they both stayed there while silence fell.  Although Jack was nervous at first, it turned into a companionable silence, and Pitch sank down to sit at the base of the tree, only a dozen feet away.  Jack stayed down in the snow, drinking in the cold, and feeling the wind prompting him, he allowed a light snow to start falling.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Pitch glance at him as the first few snowflakes landed in his hair, but he didn’t break the silence, turning back to gaze at the stars, and Jack followed suit, rolling onto his back and gazing upwards, not looking at Pitch.

“It’s not too cold for you?”  He said quietly after a while, trying not to break the peace.

“No,” Pitch replied.  “Living among the stars is much colder than this.”

Jack nodded idly, wondering to himself if that was part of the reason why the cold had never bothered him.

Still gazing at the moon, he thought of an idea, and frowned slightly.

“Pitch?”  He asked quietly.

“Yes, Jack?” Pitch sighed in return.

“How do you breathe in space?  You don’t wear suits, like astronauts, right?”

Jack couldn’t see Pitch, but he could feel his gaze.

“No, we don’t.  I suppose it is just the birthright of the lunar people.”  He sounded slightly confused.  “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, just curious,” Jack said lightly, gazing intently at the moon, allowing the silence to return.  Again he felt Pitch’s gaze keep returning to him.

He stayed silent as long as he could under the golden stare.  (In fact, he lasted about ten minutes.)

“Okay, _what_?  I can _feel_ you looking at me.”  Jack exclaimed, turning and expecting to see Pitch smirking at him like usual.

Jack fell silent when Pitch didn’t react, didn’t jab at him like he usually did.

Pitch stayed silent instead, continuing to stare at Jack with an unreadable expression on his face.  Jack started to squirm under his gaze.

Jack had given up on getting a response and was wondering if he should fly away when Pitch finally spoke.

“You’re not afraid of me anymore.”

Jack froze halfway through rising.

He didn’t say anything for a second, slightly surprised himself to find that Pitch was right.

“That’s not a question,” he finally muttered, trying to sound casual but unable to keep a tone of nervousness out of his voice.

“Will you tell me why?”  Pitch asked, and Jack could hear the barest hint of wonder in his voice.

Jack opened his mouth but no sound came out.  He tried to form words, but they fled his brain like birds before his winter storms.

“Ah,” Pitch finally muttered, sounding disappointed, “you don’t have to tell me.”

Jack risked a glance at his face, and found himself held by golden eyes again.  His own grew wide, feeling guilty for not telling Pitch his secret, but also unwilling to tell him until he knew what he wanted to do.

So he picked the easiest choice.

He fled on the night winds.

\---

Several days later when the sun began to set, Jack wait for the moon to appear, glowing and whole, then decided to put his theory to the test.

Aiming straight towards the moon, he shot upwards like a rocket, flying faster than he ever had before.  When he hit the outer atmosphere’s edge and the air grew thin, he felt his lungs fail to find enough oxygen and he fought down panic for a moment feeling the horrible sensation of drowning, but then the feeling passed, and he found himself not needing to breathe.  He laughed as he fought gravity and broke away from the pull of the earth.  Ice crystals formed over his skin of its own accord, frost and shards spilling out until he looked like some wild thing, ice sprouting from his arms and back from his face, as he shot towards the moon at an incredible speed, letting his magic spread around him, leaving a trail of frost lingering in the vacuum of space.

He wondered with a smirk how NASA might explain the frost-trail.


	5. Forbidden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: The Man in the Moon is an Asshole.
> 
> Oh and I'll post the next chapter tomorrow instead of Sunday.

As Jack continued to fly closer to the moon, he felt an odd pressure near the heart that hadn’t beaten in three hundred years.  His core of ice and frost beat within him, slowly at first and then building until he stopped moving, clutching his chest and free-floating in space.

Jack could feel an alien presence in his mind, one he had felt once before, when the Man in the Moon saved him.

_You cannot leave_ , the voice said, though it only shook through him, making no audible sound, but causing his body to shake with the force.

_If you leave, the magic will fail you._

“I can live without magic!” Jack shouted against the pain in his head.  “I want to go with Pitch,” he shouted, sure in that moment.  “I want to see the home I once had - to see my family,” he said, and he caught flashes of memories, conjured by the disturbance in his mind.  A mother.  A sister.  He had a family, once.  They had been alive when he left...no, when he ran away from home, stole a uniform, and snuck his way onto the first ship leaving his home planet.

_You will never make it.  You will die without your frost.  Do not help the dark one if you want to live._

The voice left his mind, but not before sending a force through him which sent him falling back towards the Earth, faster than he had left it.

Powerless to slow down, holding his head as if it would shatter if he removed his hands, Jack Frost rocketed back to Earth, finally crashing into the pacific ocean, his momentum taking him farther underwater than any human would survive.

Jack didn’t move for the longest time as the pain slowly left his body, lingering like molasses.

He felt broken all over again.

He had finally made a choice, one he knew he had always been going to make.  Finding his family was all he had ever wanted.

And now he never could.

The rage grew inside him like never before, burning out the sadness and loneliness he felt.

_He_ never could.

But he’d be damned if he let the Moon stop him from helping Pitch.  ‘Dark one’ or not, if the Man in the Moon forbade it...He would help Pitch out of spite alone, even if he didn’t already feel -

Jack cut off his own thoughts, and let the rage inside him spill out, flash-freezing the already near-freezing water around him.  The few sea creatures that had been nearby fled from the unknown threat or were frozen solid in a huge mass of ice, which started floating slowly, rising from the depths as the frost spirit rocketed back towards the surface.

He needed to find Pitch Black.

\---

Jack flew around the ship’s crash site once night fell, searching for Pitch or his shadows.

After nearly an hour of flying over the same landscape with no success, Jack landed lightly on a branch, catching himself with his staff and letting the momentum loop him around once before perching on it.

He leaned back against the trunk and sighed, waving his staff again to make the snow fall harder.

He snorted quietly.

“Pitch’s gonna kill me…”

“Oh?  For anything in particular?”

Jack’s eyes bulged out of his head and he whirled around to find Pitch standing on a branch behind him and a little lower than his.

He looked more than a little irritated, with a half-smirk on his face that didn’t contain much humor.

“Pitch…” Jack mumbled, waiting for his fear to spike as usual, but instead he just felt his rage boiling just beneath the surface.

Pitch’s smirk vanished, replaced by a frown.

“That’s the second time.”

Jack blinked.

“What?”

“That’s the second time you’ve seen me and not been afraid.  I never thought I wouldn’t taste your sweet fear again each time I saw you, and I find that I miss it.  I want to know why it is gone.”  Pitch’s golden eyes burned through Jack, and he swallowed and looked away.

“I...I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And,” Pitch continued as if Jack hadn’t spoken, stalking along the branch like a cat who had a mouse cornered, “I would like you to tell me where you’ve been for the past week.”

“I -”

Pitch stopped and glared.

“It is not your turn to talk,” he said, his voice silky smooth.

Jack froze, feeling distinctly like a bug pinned in someone’s collection.

“Because,” Pitch continued, “you disappeared for the past week, _North_ came to see me.”

Jack’s face paled more than usual, and Pitch looked a tiny bit satisfied for the briefest moment before continuing.

“Yes, North came by my caves.  Which, as you may guess, was a visit I _thoroughly_ enjoyed.  Now, I want answers.”

Silence descended and Pitch stared at Jack while Jack sat frozen against the tree trunk.

“It’s your turn to talk now,” Pitch said dryly.

Jack unfroze, letting out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.  He spent a few seconds breathing in deeply.  He’d been forgetting to breathe quite a lot since visiting space.

A noise made him look up again at Pitch, who had just cleared his throat and was now looking downright pissed off.

Jack coughed awkwardly.

“Er...sorry I was gone.  I needed to talk to someone.  It took a while to reach them.”

He stopped talking, and Pitch waited for a minute before raising a hand covered in shadows, and Jack scrambled to his feet hastily.

“Wait, wait, wait!”

“Then you had better explain more,” Pitch said angrily.

Jack let out a breath and sat down again, completely ignoring the fact that Pitch still had his shadows in hand.

“I went and talked to the Man in the Moon.  He -”

Pitch cut him off.

“You WHAT?”  He exclaimed.  The shadows vanished from his fist in his surprise.

Jack cleared his throat.

“I talked to the Man in the Moon.  He told me not to help you.  That’s all.  I talked to him, then I came back.  It just...took a while.”

Pitch just stared at him for several minutes, and just closed his eyes and kneaded the bridge of his nose.

“So you’re done, then.  Going back to the Guardians?”  He sounded resigned.

Jack blinked.  Then his jaw dropped.

“Wait...you really think that’s what I’m going to do?”

Pitch stopped and looked up.

“Isn’t it?  You’re a Guardian.”

Jack groaned and rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, but that’s not all I am.  And this time, the Man in the Moon is not getting what he wants.”

Some of Jack’s anger had come out in his voice, and he could tell Pitch heard it.  Pitch’s gaze had zeroed in on his face, and he seemed surprised and confused, but Jack could swear he saw the corners of Pitch’s mouth twitch upwards.

Still holding Jack’s gaze, Pitch’s face seemed to relax into a confused smugness.

“Then I should tell you, North fixed the engine.”

Jack’s jaw dropped again, then a grin split his face.

“Pitch, that’s great!”  He let out a whoop and jumped into the air.  The snow started falling harder around them, which Jack didn’t even notice.

Until a branch above them bent under the weight of the snow and dropped it directly onto Pitch’s head.

He glared as Jack laughed so hard he fell backwards off the branch and into the snow below with a soft thump.

Then another branch, disturbed by Pitch’s shadows, dumped a larger pile of snow onto Jack.

Unburying himself, Jack sat up and faced Pitch again, the smile just lingering on his face.

“When do we start charging it?”  He asked, anger at the Moon suppressing the thin coil of worry in his belly.

“Tomorrow,” Pitch answered, and Jack nodded in agreement.

 


	6. Charging

Jack rested his hands on the engine’s input, trying to ignore Pitch’s gaze on his back.

His attention span and ability to focus had never been very high, though, and he got distracted every time he heard a rustle of fabric behind him.

“Pitch,” he finally half-shouted, “could you leave?  I can’t concentrate with you here!”  He flushed when he saw Pitch staring at him in surprise, and flushed harder when he realized how loud he had been.  “Er...please?”

Pitch blinked, looking like a surprised owl for a moment, then nodded once and melted into the shadows, disappearing.

Jack shook himself a little and turned back to the engine, placing both hands on it and summoning his frost.

Ice coated the engine.

Jack growled in frustration, and tried again.

It took him another hour to consistently be able to funnel his energy as actual energy and not as ice or frost.

Pitch returned when Jack sat down, gasping for air and exhausted.  Jack guessed he’d been watching from somewhere nearby.

“How’d I do?” He asked between gasps of air.

Pitch walked over and picked up the engine, reading a small gauge on one side.

His face fell.

“Barely a dent in it,” he sighed.

Jack frowned, then reached out to grab Pitch’s arm.

“It’s okay.  I’ll try again tomorrow.  I know how to do it now.”

Pitch didn’t reply, staring at Jack’s hand on his arm.

Jack withdrew it awkwardly, and Pitch took a half-step towards him automatically, then hurriedly stepped back.

They both just stared at each other, the silence turning rapidly awkward.

“Er….see you tomorrow, then,” Jack mumbled and called the wind to whisk him away.

\---

The next morning, Jack and Pitch were dismayed to see that the engine had lost the previous day’s charge.  Jack flew to North’s workshop and asked him about it, and they came to the conclusion that it was an all-or-nothing deal, since the engine, once full, would be able to continually renew its own energy levels.

Jack didn’t understand much of North’s explanation, but he came away with a determination to fill it in one go.

And so he spent all the daylight hours of the next day funneling his energy into the engine, and continued into the night, not even stopping when Pitch walked up and rested a hand on his shoulder.

Jack was too focused to be sure, but he thought Pitch told him he needs to rest.

Instead, he kept sending a steady stream of energy into the engine.  At some point Pitch left again, and Jack wasn’t aware enough to notice.

Once Jack was shaking and had long since crumpled to the ground, unable to continue standing, the engine was nearly full, but Jack finally cut off the power stream, and watched in despair as he sees the energy levels decrease rapidly.  It only took a few minutes for the engine to empty completely, and Jack was left sitting there, shaking from both exhaustion and frustration.

“Jack,” Pitch’s voice called quietly from behind him.

Jack closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before turning around.

“I’m so sorry, Pitch.  I just couldn’t…”

Pitch cut him off with a hand on his shoulder again.

“Thank you, Jack Frost.”  Pitch’s voice was somewhat stiff and formal, but Jack saw the wetness gleaming in the edges of his eyes before he turned away.

“I’ll keep trying!” Jack shouted as Pitch walked away, back into the shadows.

Jack collapsed on the ground next to the engine and fell asleep with one hand still touching the side of the engine.

\---

When Jack woke up again, he’d slept for nearly two full days, but he felt recharged, if still frustrated and sore from standing still for so long.  Pitch had stuck a note to the engine by his hand, and when he pulled it free, the small shadow holding it to the engine flew off into the air.

Jack watched it until it vanished, then read the letter.

It simply said _You tried hard enough already_.

Jack ground his teeth together and crumpled the letter in one fist, shoving it into the pocket of his hoodie.

Standing in the moonlight, he glanced upwards and felt a surge of anger, sure the moon was watching him, satisfied he had failed.

The anger came with a rush of energy to his fingertips, and he grabbed the engine, ready to try again.

Hours later, he once again was sitting in the snow, knowing he had expended his power, and was still just barely away from his goal.

He cursed that the shadow energy couldn’t help, and that the Guardians had refused to provide further assistance.

He cursed his own _weakness_.

Jack was about to release the energy flow again when he realized he couldn’t have used all his energy - he could still feel his frost magic core pulsing slowly in his chest.

And so he gritted his teeth and pushed more and more magic out, like a runner’s final sprint at the end of a marathon.

Just as the engine filled, he felt a jolt in his chest, and he collapsed forward into the snow, close to passing out.

He gasped for air, and then stopped when it sent a flare of pain through his lungs.

Something was wrong.

Very, very wrong.

He could still feel his ice core, but it felt...broken.

He tried to make a few snowflakes, and nothing happened.

_I warned you, Jack Frost_ , the Moon’s voice rang through his head.   _You used too much of your power.  The connection is broken._

_Connection?_ Jack wondered.

His last thought before passing out was a realization - the Moon meant his core, keeping him alive.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...  
>  -flees for the hills-
> 
> If I get three comments on this chapter today, you'll get the next chapter tomorrow instead of Monday. That's the final chapter.


	7. Departure

Jack woke up half-buried in snow.  He still felt groggy, and it took him several minutes to realize Pitch was standing a short distance away, clearly aware Jack was awake but giving him time to wake up fully on his own.

“P-Pitch?”

Pitch turned around at once, and Jack blinked to see his expression - he didn’t look angry, or concerned, or any of the expressions Jack had seen on his face before.

He looked downright _happy_.

“What are you doing here?”  Jack asked, now baffled.

Pitch blinked, looking taken aback for a moment.

“It worked.   _You_ did it.”  He sounded slightly awed.

“It did?”

Jack noticed the engine still lying next to him on top of the snow.  It wasn’t buried in snow like he was, he realized, which meant Pitch had shifted the snow on top of _him.  Why?_

Belatedly Jack realized the indicator on the side which told them the energy level was full, and there was a quiet humming coming from the engine as it continually used and renewed the energy.

He turned back to Pitch who was still staring at him.

“Er, why did you cover me in snow?” Jack asked awkwardly.

“You must have used a lot of energy to fill the engine - when I found you, you were sleeping face-down in the snow, and you were far warmer than usual.  I figured putting a blanket over you wouldn’t help, so I covered you in snow instead.”

Pitch turned away awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable at being caught doing something nice, Jack thought.  He couldn’t help the half-smile that snuck onto his face.

“Thanks,” he said, before losing the smile when he remembered what the Moon had told him.  He could feel his broken core within him, and he figured it wouldn’t last much longer.

“Then...you’ll be leaving now?  To find your daughter?”  He quickly asked before Pitch would notice.

When he looked up at Pitch again, he was scrutinizing Jack, and he wondered if he had noticed already.

“Yes,” Pitch said simply.

Jack took a deep breath, then forced a smile on his face, shoving his fears about his core down as far as he could.

“Jack?”

Jack met Pitch’s eyes again.

“Would you like to come with me?”

Pitch looked uncomfortable asking, and his posture was rigid again, and Jack’s jaw dropped. Did he _know_?

“Uh...why would you ask me?”  He said, stuttering slightly.

Now Pitch looked _really_ uncomfortable.

“I felt...your fear spike when I said I was leaving.”

Now neither of them could meet each other’s eyes, and Jack knew he must be beet red.

Pitch had misunderstood what had caused his fear, but he wasn’t wrong that Jack wanted to leave with him.

He didn’t want to hurt Pitch, but he knew he wouldn’t last much longer.

_Oh screw it_ , he thought, and took the selfish road.

“I...I would like that…”  He mumbled, looking anywhere except at Pitch.

He felt, rather than saw, Pitch turn and gape at him.

“You...would?  What about the Guardians?”  Pitch asked.

Jack snorted lightly under his breath.  Was Pitch trying to talk him _out_ of it?

“Don’t worry about them,” he said lightly, burying his worries again. “I’ve always been a nuisance to them anyway.  Besides, with the Nightmare King gone, they won’t need me.”

Pitch was frowning, still not entirely convinced, but he nodded, walking over, and picked up the engine.

“Just…” Jack started, and Pitch turned back to him.  “I need to say goodbye to them, okay?  Will you wait for me?”

Pitch nodded.

“I’ll be on the ship.  Come back when you’re ready,” he said, still somewhat stiffly, and vanished into the shadows.

Jack nodded, then called the wind to him.  It took more of an effort than usual, but soon he was flying, if a little unsteadily, towards North’s workshop.

As soon as he arrived and explained why he was there, North called Toothiana and Bunnymund.

Both appeared almost instantly.

“Then you decided to leave, Jack?”  Tooth asked as she flew over to him.

Jack extracted her fingers from his mouth, then nodded.

“Yeah.  I...did North tell you I was from the same ship?”

Tooth nodded, and Bunny did once as well, arms still crossed and looking rather annoyed.

“I’m glad we’re getting rid of the Nightmare King, mate,” he said, “but I can’t believe you’re releasing him on the rest of the universe.  You shouldn’t have helped him, Jack.”

Jack opened his mouth to reply and then shut it, turning his back to the rabbit and ignoring him instead.

“Never asked you,” he muttered and went back to hugging Tooth and North.

They exchanged a few more farewells, and then Jack left, as quickly as he could.

He only had one more stop to make before he could leave.

Jack left the cave for the last time, holding a small bag with the large lump of ice in it, and flew back the short distance to Pitch’s ship.

When he walked through the door, Pitch turned and gave him a half-smile, then turned back to the controls, sealing the outer door and starting up the engine.

Jack stood by his side as the ship started to float above the ground.

“You’ll want to sit down for this,” Pitch muttered, concentrating on flying the ship.

Jack quickly strapped himself in a nearby seat, just in time for the ship to quickly swerve upwards, rocketing into space.

Once they were out of the atmosphere, Pitch began tapping furiously on the keys.

“I am entering in the coordinates of my home planet,” Pitch explained when Jack asked.

Then Pitch unhooked himself out of his seat, and Jack followed.

“There is nothing to do but wait now,” he said, looking at Jack, but Jack was staring out the window, watching the moon drawing closer and closer.

He could feel his core dissipating.

“Pitch, I need to tell you something,” he said, turning back around, and found Pitch looking at him with an odd expression - expectant, Jack thought.

“Yes, you do.  Is this why you haven’t been afraid of me lately, and why you actually agreed to leave?  I didn’t think you would.”

Jack swallowed nervously and nodded.

“It can’t just be that you -”  Pitch cut himself off.  “I mean, it can’t just be due to...Antarctica?”

Jack heard the question in his voice, and shook his head.

“No, not...just that,” he said, peering up at Pitch’s face and watching him blink, slightly startled at Jack’s admission.

Instead of saying anything, Jack reached into his bag and pulled out the lump of ice, handing it to Pitch.  The ice was rapidly melting as Jack felt his core keep shaking the further they flew away from the earth.

Pitch stared at the rapidly-melting ice, until he was only holding a folded, worn-out piece of fabric.

Then he looked up and gaped at Jack.

“You -” he began, and then couldn’t continue.

Jack nodded, swallowing around a lump in his throat.

“I was on the ship.  Support staff, I think.  I still don’t remember all of it, but...I remember you.  I remember that much.”

He kept talking, while Pitch stared at him with his jaw slightly dropped.

“I think the moon revived me when I died in the crash, and then...I talked to the Man in the Moon before I decided to help you.”

Pitch’s jaw snapped shut.

“He agreed?”  Pitch sounded shocked.

Jack shook his head.

“No.  He forbade me to.  He said I’d not live through it, if I did.”

Now a look of horror overtook Pitch’s face.

“What are you-”

Jack smiled slightly and put a hand on Pitch’s arm.

“I wanted one of us to make it home,” he said, unable to keep all of his sadness out of his voice.

Then he sighed, feeling the ice within him fracture completely.

“Koz,” he mumbled, and then his entire body quickly turned to ice in a flash.

For a moment, silence reigned, Pitch too startled to even breathe, and Jack’s figure stood there like a statue, still holding Pitch’s arm.

Then the statue fractured into a thousand tiny shards of ice, which floated in the air briefly in front of the Nightmare King, then clattered to the floor.

Pitch was frozen for another long moment before he dropped to his knees, still holding Jack’s torn uniform, as the ship carried him towards home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...While you're all screaming for my head, let me point out I used the major character death warning. And no one really died in the beginning (permanently anyway) so anyone who assumed I meant Jack becoming a frost spirit...Well...sorry.
> 
> I'm really glad people seem to like this fic, I wasn't sure anyone would. I have a couple RotG fics (Jack/Koz or Jack/Pitch, all of them) which are unfinished that I'll try to post when I can, but I have a few other fics closer to being done which will go first. But I really want to eventually write the space pirates fic this was supposed to be before Kozmotis had to go and crash into the earth. (If you only want to read my RotG fics, they'll mostly be in this series, so you can just subscribe to that if you don't want Avengers/Arrow/other series coming at you.)
> 
> ...Would anyone believe me if I said I had started this intending there to be fluff?
> 
> ...No?
> 
> Well I did, but that should tell you exactly how much to trust my brain.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading.


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